1. Brainstorming Phase:
Notes are being scribbled onto a surprisingly diverse set of surfaces, some of them are for a new game, some of them for your DICE Awards thank-you speech. You create a new folder with a work-in-progress name for your project and you are like
Mood: You are beyond yourself because you realize that your game will be the next Minecraft.
2. Hatching Things Out Phase:
You make some serious formatting decisions for the documents you started in phase 1. Notes are herded together to try and crush them into an actual game. After the first rush of OCD passes you realize that some of those awesome snippets were actually rather vague and abstract and, God, there are just so many holes to fill! Sensibly (and because you feel really dried out for ideas) you decide to postpone filling them until you have some actual game play to judge.
Mood: Still optimistic at times. Your project starts to resemble work, which makes you feel mature but also, you know, less enthusiastic. Doubts start to creep in about some of the holes that you patched: Maybe, just maybe, your game may not turn out to be the next Minecraft after all.
3. Realizing Phase – Prototype:
Setting up a prototype makes you remember how much work it is to just get game essentials like menus, asset loading and path finding up and running. You copy&paste from other projects, hushing that voice of shame in your head with a “we’ll automate and clean that up later”.
Mood: Everything is still chill because you know that shitty UI you just made is temporary anyway.
4. Realizing Phase Demo:
You make a TODO list where you constantly shuffle things from “Essentials” to “Nice to have”. You finally remember to “automate and clean up” – because now there are more important tasks to do.
Mood: You’re overwhelmed by the still impressive length of your “Essentials” TODO list, so you decide not to open it anymore. You start to resent your game for being so large and complex. With sadistic relish you cut out every feature that made you excited about your game in the first place.
5. Depression Phase:
Just shortly before or maybe the moment you finish the demo you realize: Nothing looks or works or feels as it should. You wonder how and where you could have gone so wrong. You look at your initial brainstorming ideas and wonder how the hell you could ever think this would be fun. Minecraft my ass.
Mood: Self-explanatory.
6. The Pivoting Phase:
You start to think about how you can save shit. You realize that you’ll have to basically throw everything out. Half-heartedly you start to implement the new changes, just to make perfectly sure that you give up the moment that everything is broken and there is no running, showable version of all your hard work.
Mood: Desperately you try to fight the inevitably dawning realization that you have wasted six month of your life. At night you have nightmares of people laughing at you for being a pathetic failure. You hate your game and think longingly of the time you worked for someone else’s (not-so-)grand vision.
7. The New Shiny or Let’s Forget About This Failure Phase:
A new shiny game idea comes along.
Mood: Excited. Just not about this game anymore.
8. Overhauling Phase aka Brainstorming Phase Round II:
For some reason it finally struck you last night how you can make that game you started three years ago into another Minecraft after all. Probably because you were in phase 7 for another game.
Mood: see 1.